“Triumphant Zion! Lift thy head!”
I dropped my head upon my hands and sobbed. Were the words ever sung to
any other tune than “Anvern,” I wonder?
In the interval of singing we chatted, laughed, and were happy. How
proud all of us girls were, on one stormy night when the gathering was
smaller than usual, and good-looking George—coloring to his ears, but
resolute—sang the bass solo in the fourth line of “Cambridge”:
“Resound their Maker’s praise!”
The rest caught the words from his tongue and carried the tune to a
conclusion.
We sang until ten o’clock; then apples, nuts, and cakes were brought
in, and sometimes sweet cider. An hour later we had the house to
ourselves, and knelt for evening prayers about the fire before going to
bed.
It was an easy-going existence, that of the well-to-do Virginia
countryman of that date. If there were already elements at work below
the surface that were to heave the fair level into smoking ruin, the
rank and file of the men who made, and who obeyed the laws, did not
suspect it.
Grumblers there were, and political debates that ran high and hot, but
the Commonwealth that had supplied the United States with statesmen and
leaders since the Constitution was framed, had no fear of a dissolution
of what was, to the apprehension of those now at the helm, the natural
order of things.